Kuwaiti Arabic

History and Development

Since Kuwait was a nation of immigrants with no native population, Kuwait has a different sociolinguists structure. Three groups make up the Kuwaiti population: The first being the descendant of Arab tribes, while the second are people originally from Al-Hasa in modern-day Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Iraq, and the third are people originally from Persia (modern-day Iran), known in Kuwait by the name Ayam^[1]. Some people believe the third to be of a lower status due to their origins.

Kuwaiti Arabic is rapidly changing due to many factors.

Emphatics

/b/, /f/, /l/, /m/, /n/ and /r/ become the emphatics ḅ, f, ḷ, ṃ, ṇ, and ṛ only when they are in the contiguity of an emphatic, a back vowel, or if they precede /a:/.

Varieties

Kuwaiti is divided into two varieties: Urban (Sedentary) and Nomadic or Bedouin. The first is believed to have developed due to exposure to the outside world, as well as Kuwait being a country of multi-regional immigrants during its infantry. The Urban dialect is seen as more prestigious than the Bedouin one.

The Urban dialect is divided into four sub-dialects, while the Bedouin is divided into two. The four sedent dialects are:

While the two Bedouin varieties are:

Historians and researchers usually demonstrate differences between the dialects using the Kuwaiti word for Sugar, which has three different pronunciation. It is pronounced Shikar (/ʃɪkər/) in Sharg dialect, Shakar (/ʃəkər/) in Fintaas dialect, and Shakir (/ʃəkɪr/) in Jibla dialect.

Status

Dashti identifies four varieties of Arabic in Kuwait. Classical Arabic (CA), the language of the Quran, the liturgical language of Islam, the religion of the vast majority of Kuwaitis, and old Arabic literature, Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), which is the medium of formal communication and school education. This variety is considered the second language of Kuwaitis as they are only introduced to when they start school. Kuwaiti Arabic (KA), the language of everyday's life and the symbol of the Kuwaiti identity. It is a symbol of prestige in the Kuwaiti society. The last variety is Educated Standard Arabic (ESA), in which the speaker mixes between MSA and KA. This language is used in Radio, TV, and academics' informal discussions. Kuwait is diglossic, like the rest of the Arab world, with the Arabic language being seen us the high variety, while Kuwaiti is seen more like a patois or a low-variety colloquial dialect of Arabic.

Kuwaiti is the "normal" way of speaking in everyday's life and is acquired naturally at home and not taught at schools (as it is considered a mere dialect of the Arabic language by the public).

After conducting several interviews with speakers of Kuwaiti, Akbar states that for many, speaking Kuwaiti is the most important criterion of being considered Kuwaiti.

Features and Characteristics

Kuwaiti Arabic is a variant of Gulf Arabic, sharing similarities with the dialects of neighboring coastal areas in Eastern Arabia. Due to immigration during its early history as well as trade, Kuwaiti was influenced by many languages such as Persian, English, Italian, Urdu, Turkish, and others.

A unique characteristic in Kuwait is the use of words and phrases by women exclusively, for example "يَا حَافِظ", roughly translated to "Oh Saver [God]", is rarely or never used by men. It's also different than a lot of Arabic variants in the way that phonological assimilation occurs to a multitude of words, but not to all of them. The only case of full assimilation is /dˤ/ changing to /ðˤ/ in all words.

Differences between Arabic and Kuwaiti

Standard Arabic is a dead language; meaning it is not spoken natively by people anymore. Each variety of Arabic has evolved and developed over time. Some of the differences between the formal Arabic and Kuwaiti are:

Note: Copulas are used before verbs only, not adjectives. For example: I am drinking, not I am drunk.

The past tenses are formed by adding كَانْ /kaan/ before each copula.

Lexicon

Kuwaiti borrowed a lot of words from different languages due to immigration and trade. Below are few examples with the corresponding Arabic words. As noticed, a lot of words come from Persian. This is due to the fact that the only original inhabitants of Kuwait who were not Arabs were Persians.

Note: A green box indicates that the MSA word is used in Kuwaiti (most of the times interchangeably), while a red box means it's not.

Old-fashioned or obsolete words

some words were replaced by native Arabic words over time. A few examples of such words include:

Dr. Ya'goob al-Ghaneem points at the increasing numbers of Arab expatriate and exposure to media in different Arabics as the reasons behind this change. Fatima Mahasin hypothesises that the words being replaced are not of English, French or Italian origins, and tend originate from "less-prestigious" languages.